This section is dedicated to the JavaScript language itself, and not the parts that are specific to Web pages or other host environments. For information about APIs specific to Web pages, please see Web APIs and DOM.

The standard for JavaScript is ECMAScript. As of 2012, all modern browsers fully support ECMAScript 5.1. Older browsers support at least ECMAScript 3. On June 17, 2015, ECMA International published the sixth major version of ECMAScript, which is officially called ECMAScript 2015, and was initially referred to as ECMAScript 6 or ES6. Since then, ECMAScript standards are on yearly release cycles. This documentation refers to the latest draft version, which is currently ECMAScript 2018.

Do not confuse JavaScript with the Java programming language. Both "Java" and "JavaScript" are trademarks or registered trademarks of Oracle in the U.S. and other countries. However, the two programming languages have very different syntax, semantics, and uses.

Tutorials

Learn how to program in JavaScript with guides and tutorials.

For complete beginners

Head over to our Learning Area JavaScript topic if you want to learn JavaScript but have no previous experience of JavaScript or programming. The complete modules available there are as follows:

Answers some fundamental questions such as "what is JavaScript?", "what does it look like?", and "what can it do?", along with discussing key JavaScript features such as variables, strings, numbers, and arrays.

Intermediate

The object-oriented nature of JavaScript is important to understand if you want to go further with your knowledge of the language and write more efficient code, therefore we've provided this module to help you.

When writing client-side JavaScript for web sites or applications, you won't go very far before you start to use APIs — interfaces for manipulating different aspects of the browser and operating system the site is running on, or even data from other web sites or services. In this module we will explore what APIs are, and how to use some of the most common APIs you'll come across often in your development work.